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APOD: A Light and Dusty Night (2021 Oct 02)

Posted: Sat Oct 02, 2021 4:05 am
by APOD Robot
Image A Light and Dusty Night

Explanation: Posing as a brilliant evening star, Venus lies near the western horizon in this southern hemisphere, early spring, night skyscape. To create the composite view exposures tracking the sky and fixed for the foreground were taken on September 25 from Cascavel in southern Brazil. In view after sunset, Venus appears immersed in a cone of zodiacal light, sunlight scattered from dust along the Solar System's ecliptic plane. In fact from either hemisphere of planet Earth, zodiacal light is most visible after sunset near a spring equinox, (or before sunrise near an autumn equinox) when its luminous arc lies at steep angles to the horizon. Extending above the sunset on this night, the zodiacal light reaches toward rich starfields and immense interstellar dust clouds in the bulge of the central Milky Way. Follow along the Milky Way from the central bulge back toward the horizon and you'll spot the closest star system to the Sun, Alpha Centauri, a mere 4.37 light-years away.

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Re: APOD: A Light and Dusty Night (2021 Oct 02)

Posted: Sat Oct 02, 2021 12:05 pm
by orin stepanek
2021Jul11MarsVenusMoon_ShiHuan.jpg
In actuality Mars is more a serine type planet
and Venus is more harsh! :mrgreen:

Re: APOD: A Light and Dusty Night (2021 Oct 02)

Posted: Sat Oct 02, 2021 4:19 pm
by neufer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_dark_and_stormy_night wrote: <<"It was a dark and stormy night." is an often-mocked and parodied phrase considered to represent "the archetypal example of a florid, melodramatic style of fiction writing", also known as purple prose. The status of the sentence as an archetype for bad writing comes from the first phrase of the opening sentence (incipit) of English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul Clifford: "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

The Peanuts comic strip character Snoopy, in his imagined persona as the World Famous Author, sometimes begins his novels with the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night." Cartoonist Charles Schulz made Snoopy use this phrase because "it was a cliché, and had been one for a very long time". A book by Schulz, titled It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, Snoopy, and credited to Snoopy as author, was published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston in 1971.

It is the opening line in the popular 1962 novel A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. L'Engle biographer Leonard Marcus notes that "With a wink to the reader, she chose for the opening line of A Wrinkle in Time, her most audaciously original work of fiction, that hoariest of cliches ... L'Engle herself was certainly aware of old warhorse's literary provenance as ... Edward Bulwer-Lytton's much maligned much parodied repository of Victorian purple prose, Paul Clifford.">>

Re: APOD: A Light and Dusty Night (2021 Oct 02)

Posted: Sat Oct 02, 2021 4:39 pm
by ta152h0
A mere 4.3 light years away? That is a long ways, even at 32,000 mph that New Horizon's Space Craft is traveling at. It would require generations of humans and a complete support system that includes a higher degree of education. Now how are you going to do that? Pass the ice cold one.

Re: APOD: A Light and Dusty Night (2021 Oct 02)

Posted: Sat Oct 02, 2021 6:53 pm
by neufer
ta152h0 wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 4:39 pm
A mere 4.3 light years away? That is a long ways, even at 32,000 mph that New Horizon's Space Craft is traveling at. It would require generations of humans and a complete support system that includes a higher degree of education. Now how are you going to do that? Pass the ice cold one.
"MERE" is a standard APOD "tell/prosodic cue" for sarcasm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm wrote:
<<In English, sarcasm is often telegraphed with kinesic/prosodic cues by speaking more slowly and with a lower pitch. Similarly, Dutch uses a lowered pitch; sometimes to such an extent that the expression is reduced to a "MERE" mumble.

Sarcasm is the use of words usually used to either mock or annoy someone, or for humorous purposes. Sarcasm may employ ambivalence, although it is not necessarily ironic. Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflection with which it is spoken or, with an undercurrent of irony, by the extreme disproportion of the comment to the situation, and is largely context-dependent.

The word comes from the Greek σαρκασμός (sarkasmós) which is taken from σαρκάζειν (sarkázein) meaning "to tear flesh, bite the lip in rage, sneer". It is first recorded in English in 1579, in an annotation to The Shepheardes Calender by Edmund Spenser: Tom piper, an ironicall Sarcasmus, spoken in derision of these rude wits, whych ...>>

Re: APOD: A Light and Dusty Night (2021 Oct 02)

Posted: Sat Oct 02, 2021 8:25 pm
by johnnydeep
This is crying out for annotation. At least to point out Alpha Centauri. I couldn't be sure even with the help of a star map. And I'm sure Ann likes all those nice "blueberries" peppering the sky...

Re: APOD: A Light and Dusty Night (2021 Oct 02)

Posted: Sat Oct 02, 2021 9:04 pm
by orin stepanek
johnnydeep wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 8:25 pm This is crying out for annotation. At least to point out Alpha Centauri. I couldn't be sure even with the help of a star map. And I'm sure Ann likes all those nice "blueberries" peppering the sky...
ProximaPlanet_ESO_960.jpg
Not what you wanted?

Re: APOD: A Light and Dusty Night (2021 Oct 02)

Posted: Sat Oct 02, 2021 9:46 pm
by ta152h0
Humorous! pass the ice cold one

Re: APOD: A Light and Dusty Night (2021 Oct 02)

Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2021 1:48 am
by orin stepanek
ta152h0 wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 9:46 pm Humorous! pass the ice cold one

Where is the humor?

Re: APOD: A Light and Dusty Night (2021 Oct 02)

Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2021 4:38 am
by alter-ego
orin stepanek wrote: Sun Oct 03, 2021 1:48 am
ta152h0 wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 9:46 pm Humorous! pass the ice cold one

Where is the humor?
I found the breadth of humor tends to be more encompassing as the number of cold ones increase... :-D :lol2: :derp:

Re: APOD: A Light and Dusty Night (2021 Oct 02)

Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2021 1:23 pm
by johnnydeep
orin stepanek wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 9:04 pm
johnnydeep wrote: Sat Oct 02, 2021 8:25 pm This is crying out for annotation. At least to point out Alpha Centauri. I couldn't be sure even with the help of a star map. And I'm sure Ann likes all those nice "blueberries" peppering the sky...
ProximaPlanet_ESO_960.jpg

Not what you wanted?
Nope. That is AN annotated picture that shows Alpha Centauri, but it's not an annotated version of THIS APOD picture. I have yet to be able to use your pic or any other to find Alpha Centauri - or Crux for that matter - in this pic.

Re: APOD: A Light and Dusty Night (2021 Oct 02)

Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2021 11:08 pm
by neufer

Re: APOD: A Light and Dusty Night (2021 Oct 02)

Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2021 1:36 pm
by johnnydeep
I give up. The dolphin clue helped a little, and based on brightness, A and B in my annotated pic below would seem to be Alpha and Beta Centauri, but that would mean that the Southern Cross is down to the left of them, but I'll be damned if I can see it. Or am I still looking at everything upside down?

Alpha and Beta Centauri?
Alpha and Beta Centauri?

Re: APOD: A Light and Dusty Night (2021 Oct 02)

Posted: Mon Oct 04, 2021 2:23 pm
by neufer
johnnydeep wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 1:36 pm
I give up. The dolphin clue helped a little, and based on brightness, A and B in my annotated pic below would seem to be Alpha and Beta Centauri, but that would mean that the Southern Cross is down to the left of them, but I'll be damned if I can see it. Or am I still looking at everything upside down?
A & B in your annotated pic are, indeed, Alpha & Beta Centauri with the Southern Cross down to the left of them. You are looking WEST at a Milky Way that basically runs from north to south such that the southern end of it lies to your left. But when you see the Milky Way looking EAST the Southern Cross will lie to the right of Alpha & Beta Centauri.

Whenever you go outside to look at constellations all you have to do to see them "upside down" is to "about face" 180º (... although you may have to wait for a rising constellation in the EAST to set in the WEST for easy "about face" viewing).

Re: APOD: A Light and Dusty Night (2021 Oct 02)

Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2021 12:38 pm
by farlightteam
Bonitas vistas

Re: APOD: A Light and Dusty Night (2021 Oct 02)

Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2021 7:15 pm
by geoffrey.landis
I think in this case "mere" is intended as understatement.

Re: APOD: A Light and Dusty Night (2021 Oct 02)

Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2021 7:51 pm
by johnnydeep
geoffrey.landis wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 7:15 pm I think in this case "mere" is intended as understatement.
I don't think so. 4.3 lightyears is indeed extremely close by in interstellar / galactic terms.

Re: APOD: A Light and Dusty Night (2021 Oct 02)

Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2021 8:15 pm
by Chris Peterson
johnnydeep wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 7:51 pm
geoffrey.landis wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 7:15 pm I think in this case "mere" is intended as understatement.
I don't think so. 4.3 lightyears is indeed extremely close by in interstellar / galactic terms.
Yup. Not much of the Universe is closer than that.

Re: APOD: A Light and Dusty Night (2021 Oct 02)

Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2021 8:27 pm
by johnnydeep
Chris Peterson wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 8:15 pm
johnnydeep wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 7:51 pm
geoffrey.landis wrote: Tue Oct 12, 2021 7:15 pm I think in this case "mere" is intended as understatement.
I don't think so. 4.3 lightyears is indeed extremely close by in interstellar / galactic terms.
Yup. Not much of the Universe is closer than that.
And yet, it's still about 276000 times farther away from the Sun than the Earth is!